1TB drives are pushing ~$100 these days (Newegg will sell you one for $110 shipped --
formatting link
... that's >200 DVDs ripped directly to the drive, or -- if the box could re-encode to MPEG4 -- over a thousand.
Yep, they certainly can and do... but the law is what prevents any major manufacturers from making a "one button" media box that does it.
I think they do that on purpose. :-( If you want to build, e.g., a docking station for an Apple iPod, you need to purchase an Apple Authentication Processor (a pre-programmed Atmel microcontroller with a bit of encryption logic in it) of the iPod will just ignore all your commands.
I'm quite confident that if Apple had ended up being run by "the other Steve" (Wozniak), you wouldn't see such silliness... although I imagine that by his own admission Woz would say he doesn't have the business skills to make Apple a profitable company, so I suppose that from a certain point of view it is better than Jobs is running the show and Woz is more or less enjoying his post-airplane-accident semi-retirement.
There's a good interview with Wozniak here:
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-- You'll enjoy it, as he discusses the great pleasure he derived from being able to squeeze incredible functionality out of a few dimes worth of electronics. :-) He also makes the interesting point that the only reason he didn't move to Corvallis, Oregon when his division -- the HP calculator branch -- did was because his wife didn't want to. If she had preferred Oregon to California, it's likely there never would have been an Apple Computer at all.
My office LAN server has that kind of storage but I mean, what would 200 movies be to a serious video fan? Probably a drop in the bucket.
You mean nobody would be allowed to build a PC, put a media player on then sell it? All you need is some kind of reasonable player on there. Ok, it ain't a button, it's a mouse click. Buttons would work as well but you had to press two. I don't remember, CTRL-something for "save".
Well, there you have one reason why there is not a single Apple product in this here house ;-)
Yes, I read that a while ago and did enjoy it. One of the few natural cost sensitive designers. Sad that he felt he didn't have the biz-skills. If he really doesn't he could hire that. Interestingly I also built a pong game as a kid. But the instant it worked I lost interest and gave it away. So I must be different, I thoroughly enjoy the business aspects of engineering but can absolutely not draw any joy from a video game or any other game that I play alone. Bores me to no end. Card games, yes, but not any electronic game.
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If it has DVD ripping software included that makes it a single click to operate (or in general, trivial enough that grandma can do it), and this feature is prominently advertised, I guarantee you won't be able to sell it at Costco or Wal*Mart without being immediately sued into oblivion by the MPAA. (Now, Jim and Bob's hole-in-the-wall computer store could sell such a thing "under the radar," of course.)
...or just not the interest in them...
I believe he has, although as far as I can tell his post-Apple businesses never really went anywhere. (E.g., Wheels of Zeus --
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-- operated for five years, shutting down in 2006.)
I'm interested to see if Mark Shuttleworth ever manages to make money off of Ubuntu, since he clearly seems to be of a mindset that he can and desires to do so, yet of course is also a strong proponent of the whole open-source software model (and as of now is spending some millions of his own money per year to keep Canoncial going). I.e., it'll be a good case for, "can you keep your technology open and still make money?"
You're probably not a fan of the government bailout of Detroit I take it, yes? Especially after all three executives who left from and arrived at the exact same airports each felt they needed their very own chartered jet? :-)
That is just a regular DVD. HD and BD are up to 50GB per title.
That does not change the legality factor. He was referring to PC extraction methodologies, dope.
Bunch of crap. Linux has players that can decode BD discs, there are HD DVD and BD readers for PCs that come with movie software to watch films from either HD format.
Not much of a believer in bailouts. Same when I lived in Germany, I never understood the fact that Volkswagen is partially government-run. Heck, there even is a Volkswagen law which was attacked by the Brussels bureaucrats, and rightfully so. And you know where I stand with respect to Brussels bureaucrats.
Yeah, that blew my mind. It's like a guy asking for welfare and pulling up in a limo. What were they thinking?
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I fugure that if the government has some billions lying around that could potentially be used as a bailout, it's far better to let the automakers fail if they can't compete... and use those monies for worker re-education (student loans), unemployment benefit extensions if needed, etc... so that they can go and find new jobs with a company that *does* know how to compete.
No. I think we should let them all fold up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy... maybe require them to pay Toyota/Nissan-level wages. But that'll never happen, the Democrats OWE the unions :-(
I doubt that they left from the same airports. I once flew on one of those (a Merlin) with Ford engineers on a visit to Cherry Semiconductor (RI). Nice! Catered food, vertical take-off... whe-e-e-e-e-e ;-)
[snip]
They aren't chartered, they're owned by the car companies AND, in GM's case, I know for sure that execs are _required_ to use that mode of transportation.
Why do liberals always worry about the peanuts when it's the diamonds that are being stolen ?:-)
...Jim Thompson
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| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
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Liberals are so cute. Dumb as a box of rocks, but cute.
Problem is the money isn't lying around. We will have to pay that back for many years to come. IMHO it can be used much better to foster self-employment. People need to learn _not_ to rely on cradle-to-grave security from a big employer. Those days are gone and they won't come back. Just like the Roman Empire didn't. In Germany they did have such a program called "Ich-AG" or in English it would be "Me, Inc.". One person enterprises. Often belittled by the leftist media but guess what, it did start quite a few successes.
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Huh? I saw the TV excerpt where the guys were asked point-blank which of them flew commercial. How many hands were raised? None. That ought to be evidence enough.
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A bankruptcy can be like a thunderstorm. Cleans the air, blows out the dead-wood. And there seems to be a lot of that.
Then that mistake should have been corrected many, many years ago. Did anybody ever calculate the cost per hour of a fully staffed Learjet, Hawker or whatever they use? I guess not, like so many other costs.
You know that I am almost as far from liberal as it gets but I disagree: Leaders must show leadership and when the belts are to be tightened they must _visibly_ tighten theirs, too. Or resign. When I was an officer I would probably have been entitled to first class. Not sure, because I never asked. My job was to take over, then resurrect production and other things in a division that was dangerously teetering and it would have been a slap into the face of others sitting in coach while I'd wine and dine "up front" on the company dime. Yeah, it'll be peanuts. But sorry, I just can't do that. And I never will.
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Understood. I've been led to believe the crux of the problem is... if the automakers fail, it takes a huge toll on the economy, so your options are largely some variant of:
1) Let the automakers fail and do nothing... sudden huge increase of unemployment payments followed, in many cases, by welfare cases. Taxpayers foot the bill, slowly at first, increasingly over time.
2) Prop up (bail out) the automakers, on the assumption that sooner or later they'll become competitive, despite some contractual obligations that they have (many of them with unions) making this a very unlikely prospect. Taxpayers are hit with a huge bill, immediately.
3) Let the automakers fail and spend some money to try to get workers back into other jobs (or entirely new jobs) as quickly as possible, via re-education, tax incentives for new businesses, etc. Somewhat larger immediate tax bill than scenario #1, but less than #2... and hopefully the least long-term impact to the economy overall.
Agreed, although it will take some significnat cultural changes -- including major changes in, e.g., healthcare where, with the present system, if you ever have a lapse of coverage it becomes nearly impossible to ever get your "pre-existing conditions" covered again. Additionally, I think it's easy to underestimate how many people are out there who really don't have anything resembling the strong social structure that you find through your friends, family, and faith.
Something I've mentioned before but I will again here... ok, let's have the automakers fail, and meanwhile institute another CCC-type program: It did a lot of lasting good and had very strong support with both republicans and democrats when introduced. The participants had to work hard, but had somewhere to live, food to eat, and at least a little bit of money to send back home or wherever until the economy improved. While it does cost the taxpayers money, of course, hopefully there are still enough "good works" that most of us can agree are worth doing, particularly when the cost of doing them is far less than if private contractors were used. (Not surprisingly, organized labor was the primary opponent of the CCC...)
Sure, but the number of sole propreitors or even two-person partnerships in this country is probably...
As Jim pointed out, I was wrong in calling them "chartered" jets -- they're actually private jets owned by the automakers themselves.
I had heard on the radio that they departed from the same airport, but I can't find any credible newstory reporting that, so you can assume there's a good chance I was incorrect about that as well.
I don't buy the automakers' excuse about "security policies require us to fly private jets" -- fine, when things are running OK, you do that... but these are exceptional times, and that calls for exceptional modifications to SOP.
I question whether that assumption is supported by the evidence. I don't think that they were thinking (at least, not about how their normal business practice would be perceived by the general public) at all.
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The exec's cost per hour is probably an order of magnitude higher than the operating cost of the jet.
Consider an executive "package" of just $100Meg per year... that works out to $50K per hour assuming he only takes two weeks of vacation ;-)
But, with liberals, image is everything... never mind the facts.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Liberals are so cute. Dumb as a box of rocks, but cute.
If the company is successful, yes. If it flops I'm for public hanging of executives.
Union wage and benefit "packages" have priced Detroit out of the market. Detroit wage and benefit packages must match what Toyota and Nissan pay American workers, or the American companies must fail. If we bail them out, label us "suckers".
Executive pay is a pee-hole-in-the-snow compared to labor wages and benefit costs.
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
Liberals are so cute. Dumb as a box of rocks, but cute.
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